BlueZ Phone Book Access Profile Heap-based Buffer Overflow Remote Code Execution Vulnerability. This vulnerability allows network-adjacent attackers to execute arbitrary code on affected installations of BlueZ. User interaction is required to exploit this vulnerability in that the target must connect to a malicious Bluetooth device. The specific flaw exists within the handling of the Phone Book Access profile. The issue results from the lack of proper validation of the length of user-supplied data prior to copying it to a fixed-length heap-based buffer. An attacker can leverage this vulnerability to execute code in the context of root. Was ZDI-CAN-20939.
Conclusion & alert: CVE-2023-51596 is rated Moderate Risk (59.8/100): CVSS High severity, with medium exploitation likelihood (EPSS 3.49%). Mandatory action: Review affected assets and schedule remediation.
Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.
EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).
| # | Date | Old EPSS score | New EPSS score | Delta (New - Old) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2026-05-04 | 2.81% | 3.49% | +0.68% |
| 2 | 2025-12-21 | 2.61% | 2.81% | +0.20% |
| 3 | 2025-11-24 | — | 2.61% | — |
Full EPSS history (16 records total)
CVSS metrics for this CVE.
| Base score | Version | Severity | Vector | Exploitability | Impact | Score source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7.1 | 3.0 | HIGH |
|
1.2 | 5.9 | [email protected] |
| vendor | priority | summary | link |
|---|---|---|---|
alpine
|
— | CVE-2023-51596: 1 source package rows (bluez); 2 state rows across 2 repos (3.17-main, 3.18-main); fixed 0, open 2. | https://security.alpinelinux.org/vuln/CVE-2023-51596 |
debian
|
not yet assigned | CVE-2023-51596 not yet assigned priority: Debian including 1 source packages (bluez), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): open 5. | https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2023-51596 |
redhat
|
medium | — | https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-51596 |
suse
|
high | CVE-2023-51596 severity important: SUSE including 16 source package names (bluez, bluez-5.72-2.el9, …), 118 product×package rows across 37 product lines (SLES-LTSS-TERADATA 15 SP2, SUSE Liberty Linux 9, … (37 product lines)): Will Not Fix 80, Known Not Affected 33, Fixed 5. | https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-51596/ |
ubuntu
|
medium | CVE-2023-51596 medium priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (bluez), 9 status rows across 9 suites (bionic, focal, jammy, noble, oracular, plucky, questing, upstream, xenial): deferred 6, ignored 2, needs-triage 1. | https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2023-51596 |
| URL | Tags |
|---|---|
| https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-23-1902/ | Third Party Advisory |